We all know of the dot-com bubble that burst over Silicon Valley in 2001, depriving millionaire wannabes their spoils. The resulting rubble produced a few next-generation victors who apparently were able to survive because they had a trait the losing side lacked: hubris.

No other sphere of the last decade has been so note-perfect in replicating the frenzy once associated with rock stars or Hollywood award shows. Now, with sales of personal technology surpassing music sales and movie tickets, companies such as Google, Facebook, Apple and others have successfully hyped their latest products and innovations by stoking cult worship and fanning fan mania. Sound familiar?

There's something quaint about those old-fashioned staged events featuring the mawkish Zuckerberg telling "you guys" about the newest Facebook partnership, or the late Steve Jobs, serious in his black turtleneck and wire rims, issuing a palm-sized salvo to make life simpler. Of course, underneath the inspirational talk is the inevitable dark side: services that infringe on consumer privacy rights, technology coded to prevent consumers from truly owning the files they pay for and download, devices that demand — and inescapably create — reliance no matter their cost, and so on.

Enter "The Circle," a new novel by Dave Eggers cast in the luminescent glow of online euphoria and a screen-seduced society unwilling to part with connectivity no matter the personal cost. While the title refers to the Internet company name that dominates this story, it could also be seen as the rabbit hole into which tumbles Mae, an innocent college graduate who, drowning in tuition debt and stuck in a dead-end job, suddenly pops into a new media Oz.

Within months, the Circle gives Mae all that she would want and more: health care for her ailing father, endless social functions with young and upbeat co-workers, and that old reliable: a sense of purpose.

We are in a near future in these pages — so near that we can imagine the Millennial generation may be just middle-aged. The template of the Circle is compiled from the playlands of modern-day corporate campuses: Besides the gym, kennel and amphitheater, worker bots are offered after-hour partying, entertainment and housing (complete with free outfits for the next day) if the night goes right. Eggers plumbs this world with a wink: Circle employees like to wave to each other, talk as if an exclamation point hangs at the end of every sentence, and generally see their position in the world as very awesome.

The company is determined to prove it trumps the government in getting jobs done — a goal to count every grain of sand in the Sahara Desert is completed just to show the company can do it. As for Mae, she gets the hang of it after being reprimanded for — get this — not socializing enough. Once the flat-screens start multiplying on her desk — she is charged with answering hundreds of consumer complaints as well as answer surveys — she proves that not only is she a whiz at doling out banality that people find believable, she also is a true believer herself.

Mae's descent into a new media monster would be quite a journey, except here the shift feels jarring, like taking a hard left turn while gunning the engine. Eggers writes a more believable character in her early time with the company, hungry for acceptance and terrified to make a mistake because it would mean returning to her previous life. That vulnerability vanishes quickly, and soon Mae is written more like a prop — like most of these characters — to serve Eggers' polemic against social media obsession and the threat it poses to authentic living. Her supporting cast — blueblood best friend Annie, ex-boyfriend Mercer, the three "Wise Men" CEOs — all serve as talking points more than fully realized characters.

At roughly 500 pages, "The Circle" also dwells on themes and relationships that never evolve, or merely inch forward, stalling the dramatic tension. For example, each encounter with Mercer, who refuses to stay on the grid, results in lengthy debates on the threats of a surveillance society, an argument all of us have had many times before. If that wasn't enough, Eggers supplies a letter from Mercer that hammers the same points.

Similarly, Eggers waits a few hundred pages to reveal the true identity of Kalden, a hoodie-wearing mystery man Mae is drawn to — but we know who he is the first time he appears. In this artificial world, where many scenes take place at keyboards, video screens or through a wrist device Mae uses to track real-time chatter online, so much of the writing feels just as canned as the devices.

The Circle's goal is "completion," or full transparency, where cameras refuse any secrets, offering true freedom for all. This scary mission is fascinating, and the fun of this novel is to connect the dots between where we are today and where the novel sees us ending up. But that exercise is not enough to sustain the premise of a novel driven by an urgency we already feel, and warning against the liabilities of artificial media that are already more than familiar. For a novel set in the future, there's a lot here that feels very 2008.

Mark Guarino is a staff writer with The Christian Science Monitor, where he covers national news out of the Midwest.